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“So that if our Seals broke, we wouldn’t be able to wreak havoc on the world,” he murmured, more to himself than to Tristelle. As much as being paralyzed by hellhounds for all eternity would have sucked, Ares had to hand it to Sestiel. It had been a good plan, and one that might have earned the ex-angel his place in Heaven had it worked. “Will he try that tack again?”
“Perhaps.”
Ares ran his mind through dozens of scenarios, and yes, now that Sestiel had a hellhound in his possession, he could use it as leverage to gain the cooperation of the animal’s pack. If so, he’d have to visit the only summoning circle outside Sheoul that was dedicated to hellhounds.
Looked like Easter Island would be Ares’s next stop.
Battle kicked impatiently on Ares’s arm. You’ll get your fight soon enough, buddy. “How many of you are left?”
“A dozen, maybe,” she said. A dozen? Jesus. Fully a hundred must have been killed or given over their souls to Sheoul. Tristelle gazed up at him with pleading eyes. “You said you can help?”
“I lied.”
Panic drained the color out of her face. “What can we do?”
“Pray.” Ares gestured to the entrance to Lilith’s temple. “And this time, don’t waste your time praying to a demon.”
Blood streamed in fat rivulets down Sestiel’s arms and legs. His throat had been slashed, his torso flayed open. None of the wounds would kill him, but death was coming for him nevertheless.
The sound of hoofbeats clanged painfully inside his head, as if someone was tapping a hammer against his skull. Sestiel stumbled down the rock face of the mountain he’d flashed himself to after Pestilence found him on Easter Island. He’d hoped to find Tristelle at the Temple of Lilith, but according to a worshipper, he’d just missed her.
He inched along a sloping ledge, praying Pestilence wouldn’t follow, but he knew better. Pestilence had drawn blood, and his demon stallion could now track Sestiel wherever he went, even if he was clinging to the hellhound pup in his basement.
Weakened by battle and blood loss, Sestiel lost his footing and tumbled over a cliff. He caught air, and for a lingering, weightless moment, he could pretend he still had wings. Could almost feel them stretching in a graceful arc behind him like phantom limbs.
But angels ousted from Heaven had their wings docked, and unless he redeemed himself, ghost feathers were all he had. There was one other way to get wings, but completing his fall by entering Sheoul, the demon realm humans called hell, had never been an option. Sestiel might have fallen, but his faith in the good and holy would not be shaken.
He held on to that thought as he hit the ground, the impact snapping bones and wrenching a cry of agony from his lips. He could barely breathe, but he dragged himself to a boulder and used the crevices as handholds to pull himself up.
He couldn’t fail. He had to perform one final service to mankind. To his Lord.
But thanks to Pestilence and his army of minions, Sestiel had nearly run out of Unfallen to transfer the agimortus to, and now he couldn’t afford the time it would take to hunt down one of the remaining few. Which left only humans as hosts. Humans, who would die within hours of receiving it.
It was possible, however, that if the human had been supernaturally enhanced, he would be stronger, last longer under the agimortus’s life-draining burden.
While he still had time, he closed his eyes and gulped the tiny vial of blood he’d taken from the hellhound after he’d flashed into the basement where he kept the pup and saw the human female’s disembodied spirit fleeing, a clear sign that she was bonded to the beast. His gut wrenched as the poison entered his belly, but awareness filtered through the nausea, hazy and distant. The human woman, Cara… he could feel her…
Light flashed before him, and the hoofbeats in his head became a raging thunder in his ears. Dressed in dull armor that creaked as his white warhorse galloped, Pestilence loosed an arrow.
Sestiel lurched to the side, but the arrow adjusted course like a guided missile and pierced him in the heart.
“You can run, but you’ll just die tired.” The Horseman’s shout reverberated off the mountain and brought stones and clumps of dirt raining down. “That’s a human military saying, but it’s so appropriate, don’t you think?”
Sestiel’s vision swam as a blood bay stallion leaped onto the scene through a veil of light, its rider guiding the beast with nothing but pressure from his knees and muscular thighs. Ares. In one hand, he bore a giant wood and iron shield, and in his other fist he clutched a sword. Rage smoldered in his ebony eyes.
“Stand down, brother!” Ares’s voice was a guttural roar. He swiveled his head to Sestiel. “Go. Now!”
The two stallions clashed, and Ares swung his great blade, but Sestiel didn’t wait around to see what happened.
Summoning his last gasp of energy, he flashed away, offering up a silent prayer for the poor soul who was about to receive his gift.
Seven
So this was York.
Cara had always wanted to see England, but not like this.
To finance the trip, she’d talked Dr. Happs into buying all of her veterinary equipment. Then she’d left Jeff a message that she might be on a wild goose chase, but that she was heading to England to find the source of their dreams.
Now she was wandering the walled city, having just finished dinner. It was too late to start the search for the house on Newland Park, but she wasn’t ready to head back to the B&B. Instead, she decided on a little sightseeing. Which was why, when she first saw the bloody man with the arrow impaled in his chest, she snapped a picture. But as the handsome blond actor stumbled down the middle of York’s famous Micklegate Street, something struck her as odd.
He looked very similar to the man she’d seen in her dream, the one who had tried to grab her when she was in the basement with Hal. Even odder, no one around her seemed to notice him. Soupy fog choked the streetlights and darkness had fallen, but it wasn’t that dark.
Gripping her cell phone tighter, she took a step back, alarm growing as the man came closer. In an awkward but lightning-quick move, he surged forward and grasped her shirt. Fear closed in on her, suffocating and ice cold as he slapped his palm against her chest. A burning sensation nearly ripped her apart, but she couldn’t scream through the pain.
Somehow, she wrenched herself away and slammed her fist into his face. As if he weighed no more than her own hundred and thirty pounds, he flew backward several yards, hit the pavement, and skidded into a light pole. She didn’t ponder how easy it had been to toss him like that, nor did she wait for him to get up. Spinning around, she scrambled toward the nearest pedestrian, but… something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
The pedestrian wasn’t moving. No one was moving. Every vehicle, every person had frozen.
In midstride.
A blinding light flashed… a camera? Had she wandered onto the set of a movie? Or some kind of reality TV prank? Her mind flipped through several scenarios, none of which really made sense, and then her mind went utterly blank when a massive white horse appeared from out of nowhere, its eyes blazing a reddish-orange fire. On its back was a knight, his armor streaked with black, the joints oozing blood.
For a crazy moment, Cara was glad to see him—a knight. It meant this really was some sort of production… right?
Sure, the special effects were abnormally great. The blood looked real. The pain on the arrow-guy’s face was spot on. The evil and cruelty in the knight’s ice-blue eyes couldn’t be more genuine.
And when the knight put a second arrow into the man who had grabbed her, the thud, the spray of blood… all so incredibly real.
“Will you die already?” The knight almost sounded bored as he nocked another arrow. His long platinum hair fell forward to conceal his expression, but dark amusement rolled off him in an oily wave Cara felt on her skin.
Please let this be a movie set. Or a dream.
The pincushioned man stumbled onto the sidewalk, bumping into the motionless people and scattering them like bowling pins. They fell hard, their bodies so stiff they might as well have been mannequins.
The knight released the arrow, nailing the guy in the back. Grunting, the unarmed man went down to his hands and knees, but kept crawling, leaving a trail of blood. Cara barely restrained a cry of horror.
Another horse and rider appeared from out of a giant oval of light in the center of the road. And this time, there was no vague sense of familiarity about the man sitting atop the horse. She knew exactly who it was.
Jeff. Her first, oddball, thought was that he’d gotten her voice message. Her second thought was that it was weird that he and his bay stallion wore some sort of leather armor, and though Cara couldn’t be certain, she thought they were both even larger than the first horse and rider.
The blond horseman grinned at Jeff as his stallion reared on its hind legs. Jeff’s “No!” rang out, but with an ear-shattering scream, the white beast came down on the arrow-pierced guy’s head. Bits of bone and gore sprayed the animal’s legs, a light pole, the front of some old lady’s dress.
Cara cried out, but neither man seemed to notice. Jeff swung his sword at the blond, who drew a blade of his own.
Stark terror coursed through her, making her tremble as she backed away. Desperate to avoid their attention, she eased down the sidewalk. All around her, the normal world was eerily silent except for the violent sounds of battle; curses, metal striking metal, the snorts and screams of stallions drawing blood.
Cara risked a glance back, but the sight of the horses dancing in the dead man’s remains as they slashed at each other with teeth and hooves curdled her stomach.
Nausea sluiced through her, bringing her to a halt in an alley between a tea shop and a bakery. Her dinner of pork pie, mash, and carrots was in serious jeopardy. Swallowing repeatedly to keep it all down, she forced her feet to move again.
Once her stomach was stable, she ran in an uncontrolled, blind sprint. She had no idea how far she’d gone when she rounded a corner and nearly bowled over a man with a walking cane. Already on edge, vision blurred by panic and unshed tears, she overcorrected, whirling into the street and slamming into a car.
The driver honked, and though Cara had nearly been turned into roadkill, she laughed. Sure, it was hysterical laughter, but the world was moving again.
“You all right, missy?” A middle-aged man stepped off the curb and came toward her, eyeing her with concern. Eyeing her as if the only thing wrong with the universe was her.
Not even close. Her smile was as shaky as her voice. “Yes. Thank you.”
He nodded and continued on. Everyone continued on. As if nothing had happened. Her cell phone rang, startling her enough to jump.
It was her therapist. Perfect timing. “Larena. It’s good to hear from you.”
“Sorry I didn’t call you back sooner. I got your message, though, and I can tell you what I think the black dog and cage mean.”
“Dog and cage?” Cara’s brain was still skipping like an old record, and it took a moment to translate Larena’s words. “Oh, right. I asked you about the dream.” Larena might be a therapist, but she’d also become a friend. A totally unconventional one, but it worked for Cara, and Larena was the only one she trusted with all her deepest and darkest.
Well, not all. Larena didn’t know the extent of Cara’s unnatural ability. People—even friends and family—had a tendency to keep you at arm’s length when you were a freak.
“Are you all right? You don’t sound so good.”
Cara dragged her hand through her tangled hair. “I—” just saw a man killed, two knights appeared out of thin air, and time stopped. But other than that, I’m fine! Someone must have slipped acid into her tea at dinner. That was the only explanation. But what could explain all the other stuff that had happened at her house?
Insanity, a chipper voice in her head chimed in. That would explain it.
“It’s nothing a hot bath won’t cure. Okay, so what’s up? Larena?” she prompted, when her friend hesitated.
“You said the dog was growling. That could mean you’ve got some sort of inner turmoil going on. You feel caged and trapped. The fact that it’s a black dog suggests danger.”
Danger. No kidding. Larena’s words drew her sharply back into focus. She’d come here chasing a freaking dream, and had gotten herself into a nightmare.
A rowdy group of twenty-something men exited the pub behind Cara, and she moved aside to avoid being trampled. “What about horses? And knights fighting? Any significance to that?”
“Ah… I’m not sure. I’d have to research it,” Larena said. “Maybe you should make an appointment.”
One of the men bumped her, didn’t acknowledge it with either a “Sorry,” or a “Screw you,” and Cara glared. The jerk… oh… oh, Jesus. She lurched backward, nearly dropping the phone.
Stubby black horns pushed up out of the man’s dark hair, and he had no skin. Only exposed muscle and bone was visible in places his clothing didn’t cover. Cara blinked, and the man appeared normal again, laughing with his buddies and disappearing into another pub.
“Cara? Hey, you there?”
“Yeah,” she croaked. She closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. Time was moving and no one looked like a demon. Life was good. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I’ll call for an appointment next week.”
“Do that. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Cara shoved the phone into her bag and got her bearings. The B&B was only a few blocks away, thank God. Drizzle had begun to fall, her head was pounding, and her nerves were shot. Time for a sleeping pill and twelve hours of shut-eye. Maybe tomorrow all of this would prove to be one big nightmare. In fact…
